Prism, cloudy, cloudy. Sun with a chance
of red rainthe flaw in the mechanism is the mechanismitself. Here, take all my personal
information, baby. I've no use for it any moreNever much enjoyed having any of itand there'll be no need for it where I'm goingThey've got all the data anybody could ever want hard-wired in anyhow
so let's shed these old identitieslose ourselves on an uncharted westerlystop the world and melt with a figmentin some other universe we'll never meet againgo anonymous to the end of timeand untie the knotbefore the photo-op blows over

10 comments:

Entering the Red Room this morning. Reading your poem reminds me that we never really leave it anyway. But, first of all, thank you for the features, Tom! It's always such an honour to be here on BTP, home of so many great poets and photographers and artists. Yes, a great honour to sit together at the breakfast table while the airplane of words is delivering its daily goodies. They've got all the data anybody could ever want. Oh yes, what else could they ever wish for. I like the word data in there, like the pinnacle of happiness in our day and age, a snapshot of their desires, a dream unattainable. Data. They can have the knots, yes, why not. And while at it, if they could also untidy the knots in our brains that would be nice. But much harder I suppose. Time to start working on it (knot).

For those people who have come of age after 9/11, it may no longer be possible to remember a world in which domestic surveillance was not so pervasive a condition as to be a veritable fact of life. To be "protected" against the paranoid fantasy projections of a failing society may not be what the people would wish to buy with their tax money, but it is what they are getting. There are half a million of these "private contractors" (mostly ex CIA personnel, like the person who exposed all these secret networks last week), working for "private firms" that are in effect extensions of government "security" agencies; this in addition to the five million people employed directly by the government to do exactly the same sort of "work" (snooping, eavesdropping). All are quite well paid... to produce nothing. This at a time when the streets of the cities are a war zone, millions are going hungry, the so-called "health care system" is a cruel travesty, and every urban doorway houses a huddled rough sleeper at night. The young man at the center of this recent disclosure has said that he does not wish to be considered a hero for disclosing the truth; he has said that it simply occurred to him, after a while, that his job required him to do things that he believed to be detrimental to the integrity of the only world there was ever going to be for him to live in. Many people have suspected, even supposed, that the state of things he has exposed has become a reality; but before now, no one who is involved in these secret machinations has raised a hand and said, "Yes, it was me, I did these things, I was not alone, and here's how it works". To do this he has sacrificed relationships, family, friends. He has suggested that he fears he may not live much longer, that sooner or later (and probably sooner) somebody will "get to him". That seems a rational fear.

Meanwhile, I think it's only reasonable, too, to expect the "security" industry, which for the past dozen years has been dangling wads of cash before the greedy eyes of every young tech nerd, to go on doing so, without control or constraint, so that soon enough the principal "product" of the society will in fact be "security" (another, perhaps more accurate word for same: "fear").

Indeed the President has lately declared that the first priority of his job is... yes, providing "security". But he is in error. In fact the first priority of his job should always be something else: protecting this strange anachronistic thing it's rumoured we may still have here, the Constitution.

at top right,Pornography and Piety,two pallid and obese figuresjoined in holy sanctimony,diddling one another while praying for different outcomes

at top left a police badgeshowing in clockwise fashiontaser truncheon cavity probe surveillance cameraand handcuffs

centered below thisupon a blazon of ignorance a one-size-fits-all gimme cap in desert camosurmounted by two crossed Predator dronesand the motto:Bring It

Liberty a corpse at the bottom;Justice decapitated;on one side of the scalesher headon the other a bag of moneyabove both an open Bible superimposed on a stack of light automatic weapons

across the middle a blaze-orange fesseshowing in an endless loop these devices:the greased palm of corruptionthe loaded dice of a speculating classthe double-cross of deceit and treacherythe torturer’s toolkitand the stenciled maxim:No MercyNo Questions

Perhaps the Middle Ages were just like this, without the wireless connection.

These mottoes emblazoned:

"the average man"

"we never really leave it anyway"

“let work be work”

And our heraldry:

across the middle a blaze-orange fesseshowing in an endless loop these devices:the greased palm of corruptionthe loaded dice of a speculating classthe double-cross of deceit and treacherythe torturer’s toolkitand the stenciled maxim:No MercyNo Questions

right now it's the singer not thesong...can't trust the governmentone stupid thing after another...recently has caused me to resurrecta word from the past...a more polite word actually...in the areaI grew up in where sentences werepunctuated with 4 letter words...crass I thought for a long timethe word dufus but recently awkwardly searched for its pleuralwhich I originally thought wasdufusai but that was wrong, thepleural of dufus is dufuses...andwhy did I search for the pleuralbecause some of the things that arecoming down from the governmentin many fields are so awry, no oneperson could be stupid enough tothink these things up. Now here ismy chance to enter the language...My friend Charlie Vermont says thatpeople who study how to be stupidare "dufusorial" as in professorial.Orwell had many things right. Heshould be studied. Being more conservative than most of visitorsto this blog, I believe we neededsurveillance to protect us fromthose who would do us harm. Political correctness in governmentis causing everyone to be blanketedand the wrong people could use thispower to obliterate freedom at somepoint in time.

"I believe we neededsurveillance to protect us fromthose who would do us harm."

Well, whether or not we needed it, we've got it. They're here with us, in this moment, the contractors from the DC tech corridor. monitoring every keystroke. And I consider that form of invasive attention a violation of my privacy, my constitutional right to free speech, my dignity (what little may be left of it) as a human being. That is harm. Those who would do us harm are those who have taken over the government of the former land of the free, and assumed unto themselves godlike powers. Me, I'd rather have chosen my own gods, if I were to have had any.

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there." (Psalm 139 vv. 1-8)